Whether you’re installing the latest version of Windows or upgrading your Linux distribution, most geeks agree that you should probably perform a clean installation rather than try your luck with an upgrade.

I used a win 8 upgrade disk to do a clean install from win 7 on 2 of my rigs, but went into the advanced options and told it to save nothing, it pulled the W7 key on the first install, but oddly the second install failed until I poped in the W7 disk. Strange but I got both clean installs done without to much hassle.I TOTALLY AGREE A CLEAN INSTALL IS BEST!As you mentioned in cleans up all your junk and registry clutter. Butyou mentioned backing up your files, well a CLEAN install forces you to backup, if you don't you will have a very clean install LOL

Stupid question with regards to the clean linux install: Is it sufficient to do a clean install on the os only or is there some rubbish to get rid of also in the user directories? I am asking because I set up my Ubuntu with two partitions: one for the OS and another for the home directories. In this way, I thought at least, it would be pretty convenient to scrub the OS partition and install the new Linux and keep the home partition.Any thoughts ?